Cooper St Workshop: Using Mindful Self-Compassion to Empower Your Writing

With a front door on historic Cooper Street, the Rutgers-Camden Writers House provides a welcoming space for the campus and community to celebrate writing across diverse disciplines, communities, and media.

The Writers House at Rutgers University-Camden

1-hour long virtual workshop on Wednesday, August 6 for new and experienced writers alike.

Summer Wednesdays on Cooper Street 2025

Build your own lineup of Cooper Street Workshops with us this summer! Lunchtime and evening options, all virtual. $20 general; $5 for Camden residents and Rutgers-Camden students. Workshops are for beginners and advanced writers alike. See you there!

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPThis workshop, led by a trained mindful self-compassion (MSC) teacher, will focus on using gentle attention to cultivate a writing practice that feeds you. For writers to conjure distinctive worlds, it helps to turn the lens of awareness on the textures of daily life and our internal landscapes. MSC can help us meet ourselves the way we would meet a good friend, and it can serve as a tool both for the writer and the text. First, we’ll experiment with relating differently to internal critical voices and develop a compassionate voice to help guide our editing process. Then, we’ll discuss techniques for writing from our senses and creating surprising figurative language. We’ll move through a short meditation to practice sensing and savoring, and we’ll generate fiction or nonfiction of our own. ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORSarah Westbrook is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University–Camden, where she also teaches composition. She has previously worked at a policy research organization, a college access nonprofit, a literacy nonprofit, and a shelter for families with children. In 2021, Sarah completed a yearlong training to become a trained teacher of mindful self-compassion. MSC continues to teach her about what it means to be human, and how to nurture understanding for our tricky human brains. This is a virtual event. To facilitate community-building, please plan to have your camera on during the workshop.